Federal Judges Side with Transgender Agenda

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

On Tuesday a 2-1 Democrat majority of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit invalidated a good West Virginia law protecting girls’ sports against invasion by male-bodied transgender students. The Richmond-based tribunal held that West Virginia’s Save Women’s Sports Act violates the federal Title IX law, which was enacted to protect girls’ sports, and also that West Virginia’s protection of girls’ sports may further violate the Constitution.

The Biden-appointed judge who wrote this absurd decision repeatedly used the propaganda term “sex assigned at birth,” as if sex were arbitrary and merely “assigned” to a newborn. On the contrary, biological science teaches that sex is determined long prior to birth, and does not change.

The transgender issue is boiling over in the courts. The U.S. Supreme Court, after earlier dodging this same transgender case and at least two others, sat on an emergency application by Idaho for an unusually long time of nearly two months before rendering a decision Monday that ducked the substance of a conservative Idaho law.

Two dozen states, including Idaho, have enacted laws protecting children against transgender operations and treatment, while the Supreme Court sidesteps the issue. Most of these laws have been challenged in federal courts by groups pushing the trans agenda, and the day after last Christmas a Clinton-appointed judge ordered a sweeping injunction blocking enforcement of Idaho HB 71.

But rather than affirm the authority of states to protect vulnerable children against irrevocable medical interventions, the Supreme Court instead rendered merely a procedural decision that cautioned against overly broad injunctions. In splintered opinions that Chief Justice Roberts refused to join, the Court reined in the Idaho federal district court without addressing the substance of the law.

There are billions of dollars at stake in profits from medical interventions for transgender purposes, and anyone in higher education who criticizes this lucrative field would risk losing career opportunities. By a wide margin, the most pro-transgender jurisdiction in our country is Washington, D.C., which might explain why the GOP-controlled House and Supreme Court have been so weak on this issue.

Three years ago Arkansas was the first state to ban transgender procedures on children, yet federal courts have still not allowed its good law to take effect. In an en banc sitting of 10 judges on the Eighth Circuit last Thursday to review this law, nearly all of the Republican-appointed judges were unwilling to ask substantive questions of the ACLU attorney for the transgender plaintiff.

With Republican-appointed judges silent as though on the sidelines, the questioning was dominated by the court’s most liberal member, Obama-appointed Judge Jane Kelly, who apparently thinks the Arkansas law somehow discriminates on the basis of sex. Such a ruling by the court would trigger the difficult-to-satisfy standard of heightened scrutiny, by which legislation is typically invalidated.

Leftists who deny sex differences try to invalidate laws they don’t like by concocting arguments that they are discriminatory. Meanwhile the transgender culture holds a grip on D.C., and on most federal courts which depend on liberal law schools for their clerks.

On Friday, the Democrat governor of Kansas vetoed a bill protecting minors against transgender treatments and surgeries, even though a similar bill has passed in half of our country, overriding the governor’s veto in four states. Laws enacted in Kentucky and Tennessee were upheld by an appellate court, while a similar law in Alabama was reinstated by a different appellate court because the district court applied an incorrect standard to block it.

Republicans have a veto-proof majority in the Kansas state senate, but the vote will be close in its state house. The outcome may depend on which legislators happen to be in attendance on the day that an override vote is held there.

Trump held a spectacular rally on Saturday evening in northeast Pennsylvania, considered by Biden to be his backyard where he grew up. There is even a President Biden Expressway in nearby Scranton, although a petition to restore the highway’s original name has attracted 17,000 signatures.

Trump attracted a vast overflow crowd on the chilly evening, withstanding a blustery wind that created challenges for Trump’s airplane to land there. Trump scored many points talking about energy, explaining how Biden’s war on coal and oil have caused runaway inflation and hurt many in Pennsylvania.

Trump courageously spoke out against the trans agenda, and vowed to cut off funding of schools that impose transgender indoctrination on students. Trump included the trans agenda along with critical race theory as propaganda which the federal government should not be funding.

Trump is the first major candidate to pledge to defund schools that mislead our children with transgender and other leftist ideologies. It is increasingly necessary to use the power of the purse to stop the transgender train.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.

These columns are also posted on PhyllisSchlafly.com, pseagles.com, and Townhall.com.

Double Whammy Against the Trans Agenda

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

The transgender movement received an unexpected setback from two very different authorities on Monday. Pope Francis, who has been applauded by liberals in many other contexts, declared that efforts to change a person’s biological sex are unacceptable as an affront to human dignity, while the leading association governing sports at 250 small colleges rejected allowing biological males to compete in women’s sports.

This double whammy came as the transgender movement had been riding high. The media had promoted a statement by Dawn Staley, the women’s basketball coach who led her South Carolina Gamecocks to an undefeated 38-0 championship season, that so-called transgender women (a.k.a men) should be allowed to compete in women’s basketball.

The sport of basketball is a good illustration of how wrong it would be to allow men to invade women’s sports. The best-ever college women’s basketball player, Iowa’s Caitlin Clark, is “only” 6 feet tall, but the average men’s basketball player is at least 6-6 and some are over 7 feet tall.

Would that six-inch-plus difference in average height be a fair match-up? Of course not, and no amount of testosterone reduction or other gender changing procedures can offset such an innate disparity between men and women athletes.

The 20-0 vote by the governing body of the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) to prohibit biological males from competing in women’s sports is eminently reasonable. The NCAA should soon follow its lead and stop the insanity of allowing biological men to compete in women’s sports.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimated in 2019 that 1.8% of high school students, or roughly 275,000, disagree with their own biological sex. Thousands of them compete as athletes.

Today a desire for accolades, scholarships, publicity, and lucrative compensation for NIL (name, image, and likeness) motivate millions of athletes. Some would do anything to win, including changing their gender.

The clarity of this new ban on unfair participation by biological men in women’s sports by the NAIA was met with disdain by the liberal media, who have outsized influence over the NCAA and pro sports due to lucrative television contracts. Most NAIA members are Christian colleges, while some are public institutions.

The Pope did not refer specifically to sports, but spoke broadly in general terms to prohibit all transgender interventions: “Desiring a personal self-determination, as gender theory prescribes, apart from this fundamental truth that human life is a gift, amounts to a concession to the age-old temptation to make oneself God.”

Officially entitled “Dignitas Infinita,” which is Latin for “Infinite Dignity,” the Vatican announcement was developed over a period of more than five years and reflects many prior papal statements affirming the reality that we are all created male and female. It condemns transgender operations and treatments, as part of its rejection of all modern degradations of human dignity including abortion.

The Pope’s message decries how “in recent decades, attempts have been made to introduce new rights that are neither fully consistent with those originally defined nor always acceptable. They have led to instances of ideological colonization, in which gender theory plays a central role; the latter is extremely dangerous since it cancels differences in its claim to make everyone equal.”

The reference to gender theory as ideological colonization is a tip of the hat to the booming African churches, which strongly resist efforts today by liberal Europeans and Americans to “colonize” them with leftwing propaganda. African Christians have overwhelmingly rejected social agendas promoted by liberal elites from the U.S. and Europe.

“The greatest possible difference that exists between living beings” is the “sexual difference” between male and female, this papal document confirms. “This foundational difference is not only the greatest imaginable difference but is also the most beautiful and most powerful of them. In the male-female couple, this difference achieves the most marvelous of reciprocities.”

“It thus becomes the source of that miracle that never ceases to surprise us: the arrival of new human beings in the world,” this Catholic document continues. “All attempts to obscure reference to the ineliminable sexual difference between man and woman are to be rejected.”

“It follows that any sex-change intervention, as a rule, risks threatening the unique dignity the person has received from the moment of conception.” This is a full stop for Leftists, medical universities, and law schools that are pushing hard for transgender operations and treatments, often at taxpayer expense.

In response, Biden’s press secretary reiterated his full support of the transgender agenda. But Biden is on the wrong side of 62 million American Catholics, many Christian colleges, nearly all African churches, and female student-athletes everywhere, and this issue may be one reason why polls show young supporters of Biden fleeing to the Republican side.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.

These columns are also posted on PhyllisSchlafly.com, pseagles.com, and Townhall.com.

Reversing the Birth Rate Decline

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Cultures as different as Italy and South Korea are facing the same crisis: declining birth rates that have fallen far below what is needed to sustain a population and an economy.

Italy just reported another drop in its birth rate to its record low, decreasing by a startling 34.2% since 2008. There were nearly twice as many deaths as births in Italy last year, and the average number of children per woman has declined to only 1.2, far below the 2.1 necessary for a population to survive.

“Every year I look at the birthrates and it’s kind of depressing,” Elon Musk told Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni in Rome last year. “One can’t depend on other countries for immigration. Italy is the people of Italy. Please make more Italians.”

South Korea, a prosperous nation with more Christians than any other faith, is in panic mode as its birth rate per woman fell to only 0.72 in 2023 and is projected to fall further this year. The country we saved in the Korean War is on a path to self-destruction by failing to have enough children.

Measures being considered in South Korea are instructive because the United States is on a similar course, as our birth rate has continued to fall since Obama was elected president in 2008. Young women are the demographic most influenced by political ads, and billions have been spent by the Left in promoting every alternative other than starting a family and having children.

CBS News recently reported that a South Korean company Booyoung is providing employees with a bonus of $75,000 for each new child that they parent. South Korean tax law allows companies to treat such bonuses as business expenses up to that amount, while American tax law generally fails to incentivize having and raising children.

Booyoung Chairman Lee Joong-keun candidly predicts that if the birth rate decline in South Korea continues, then “Korea will face a crisis of national existence 20 years from now, including a decline in the economically productive population and a shortage of defense personnel to ensure national security and maintain order.”

The United States is not far behind. The American birth rate declined by nearly 25% between 2008 and 2022, to only about 1.6 per woman today.

Demographic trends are very difficult to reverse, as children from small families tend later to have small families or no children themselves. Political leaders in Italy and many other countries recognize the plummeting birth rates as a crisis.

Taiwan’s birth rate has fallen to only 0.87, far less than half of the 2.1 children per woman needed just to survive long-term. Although a conservative country, Taiwan has turned to liberal approaches such as more government-funded child care, which have never succeeded in boosting the birth rate.

Beginning in 2019, Hungary addressed its declining births by providing a $30,000 loan to newlyweds that is forgiven if they have three children, which makes more sense than Biden’s trillion dollars in student loans. Conservative policies by Viktor Orbán, the pro-Trump leader of Hungary, have increased its birth rate, which used to be the lowest in the European Union when he started and now exceeds the EU average.

Trump and the Republican Party could lead in promoting policies that encourage American families to have more children. Trump himself has a beautiful family with five children and ten grandchildren, and our country would benefit by hearing about pro-family childbearing as a campaign issue.

A pro-birth message fits well with the Republican platform of creating good jobs for Americans, which occurred from 1980 through 2007. The Obama-Biden policy of shipping our jobs to other countries while allowing in a flood of immigrants to take jobs here has been a factor in decreasing our birth rate.

Larger families typically require a good job for the husband as breadwinner in order to create a stable family life. That model, featured in many popular television shows from 1950 through the 1980s, has disappeared in the economy and in Hollywood.

Western liberals, led by then-First Lady Laura Bush, criticized Afghanistan during the U.S. occupation for not sending more women to higher education, but our birth rate is only one-third of Afghanistan’s. By contrast women comprise nearly 60% of U.S. college students, far outnumbering men there while racking up over a trillion dollars in student debt.

Studies show that, on average, the more time that women spend in higher education, the less likely they want to have children. Students are misled into thinking that advancement in educational degrees and corporate America will be more rewarding to them than having children, when it is family life that brings greater long-term benefits.

Elon Musk, one of the wealthiest men in the world, talks as much about the need to increase the birth rate as he does about own successes. Most world leaders, other than Democrat politicians, agree.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.

These columns are also posted on PhyllisSchlafly.com, pseagles.com, and Townhall.com.

Random Phone Call defeated the ERA

Article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Opinion: How a random phone call defeated the Equal Rights Amendment

Mark R. Rank

ometimes history is shaped by monumental forces. Sometimes history is shaped by chance and luck. In the 1970s, Phyllis Schlafly played a pivotal role in defeating the Equal Rights Amendment. But as I explain in my forthcoming book, “The Random Factor,” Schlafly’s involvement almost didn’t happen.

Congress first debated the ERA in 1923. It was then introduced into every Congressional session until 1970, but routinely failed to reach a floor vote.

That changed in 1972, when the amendment was finally approved by the House and Senate and sent to the states for ratification. It stated, “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.”

Schlafly believed passage of the ERA would cost women certain traditional privileges. But by the time she fully engaged in the fight, the amendment had been ratified by 30 states, needing only eight more to become law.

Schlafly’s opposition proved decisive. Her ability to raise concerns and fears, and to get those concerns heard in a wider context, was widely seen as the key component in turning the tide against the amendment, which eventually fell three states short of final ratification.

As political scientist Jane Mansbridge wrote, “Many people who followed the struggle over the ERA believed — rightly in my view — that the Amendment would have been ratified by 1975 or 1976 had it not been for Phyllis Schlafly’s early and effective effort to organize political opponents.”

When I interviewed Schlafly in St. Louis in 2011, she was 86. We talked about a wide range of issues, but most surprising was the fact that her involvement with the ERA was the result of a completely chance event. It was a twist of fate that would change the direction of the country.

One day in November 1971, a friend of Schlafly’s in Connecticut called from out of the blue. Would Phyllis be interested in speaking at the local public library? Schlafly said she’d consider it, and suggested that she could address the strategic balance of arms between the United States and Russia — a long-standing area of interest.

“No, no,” the friend said. “I don’t want to hear about that. We want to hear about the Equal Rights Amendment.”

“I haven’t looked at it,” Schlafly replied, “and I don’t know whether I’m for it or against it.”

“I’ll send you a packet of material,” the friend responded, “and I know which side you will be on.”

The friend sent the materials. Schlafly spoke at the library, which in turn jump-started her efforts to spearhead the opposition to the ERA.

But what might have happened if Schlafly hadn’t received that phone call?

I asked her just that. She said that in all likelihood she would have continued writing and speaking about the strategic balance of arms and would not have gotten involved with the ERA — or if she had, it would have been too late to prevent its ratification.

Could someone else have played a similar role in halting the ERA? Possibly. Would that person have been as effective as Phyllis Schlafly? Unlikely.

What we do know is that Schlafly played a key role in bending history. Had that Connecticut friend not phoned when she did, our nation and politics might look very different. They certainly would look different with respect to the ERA, which would have become the 27th amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

(The actual 27th amendment, ratified in 1992, requires that any salary changes for members of Congress don’t take effect until after the next House election. No amendment has been ratified since.)

It is not an exaggeration to view the defeat of the ERA as an initial step in the country’s move toward a more conservative direction that has continued over the last 50 years, and that a random telephone call set in motion that movement.

Fittingly, one of Phyllis Schlafly’s last public appearances was in support of Donald Trump’s successful run for the presidency in 2016. At a rally in St. Louis on March 11, 2016, the 91-year old Schlafly gave her ringing support.

A single telephone call from 45 years prior was in all likelihood the reason that Schlafly was asked to give her final conservative endorsement and share the stage with the future president of the United States. In fact, that telephone call may have indirectly helped pave the way for the rise of Donald Trump.

The contours of American society are shaped by many forces. But never underestimate the role of chance. In the end, history was changed not by a monumental action or event, but by a purely chance occurrence that has continued to ripple throughout the social and political contours of American society.

Rank is the Herbert S. Hadley Professor of Social Welfare at Washington University in St. Louis. He is the author of the forthcoming book, “The Random Factor: How Chance and Luck Profoundly Shape Our Lives and the World around Us.”

Landslide in Ohio Shows GOP Path to Victory

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

The stunning landslide by underdog U.S. Senate candidate Bernie Moreno in the Ohio GOP primary shows the way for Republican victory throughout the all-important Rust Belt this fall. Pennsylvania, Michigan, and nearby Wisconsin can all be won with Moreno’s campaign theme: creating jobs for Americans.

Polling showed a too-close-to-call race between Moreno and the establishment-favored candidate, state senator Matt Dolan. Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) and the popular former U.S. Sen. Rob Portman (R) endorsed Dolan, who is the powerful state Senate Finance Committee Chairman.

Moreno is a former car salesman who campaigned that “for too long, the men and women who move Ohio forward, American workers, have been left behind by career politicians.” He was endorsed by Donald Trump and Sen. JD Vance (R-OH), who stated at a Trump rally that all of the net job growth under Biden’s presidency has gone to the foreign born, while during Trump’s presidency the job growth went to American citizens.

“I am so sick of Republicans that will say ‘I support President Trump’s policies, but I don’t like the man,’” Moreno declared to a cheering crowd. “This man wakes up every day fighting for us, fighting for this country.”

Trump’s rallies are a gold mine for our country and Republicans this year, without the Covid restrictions of 2020. From Sept. 15 through Oct. 15, 2020, the crucial period just prior to early voting, there were no Trump rallies in the key swing states of Michigan, Georgia, or Arizona, and only one in Wisconsin.

Trump’s Ohio rally boosted Moreno to victory, and more rallies like that in other Rust Belt states can work wonders. Emphasizing the issue of manufacturing jobs is a winner for all Republicans.

Tyson Foods just announced that it is laying off 1,300 workers in an Iowa city of only 8,000. Many suspect that Tyson will replace those workers with migrants, and a federal tax break called the Work Opportunity Tax Credit provides employers an incentive of up to $9,600 for each new hire from certain targeted groups, plus housing benefits.

A quarter of the new jobs during the Biden presidency have been government employment, which burdens taxpayers with no net benefit. Much of the remaining job growth consists of part-time second jobs and other low-wage work rather than well-paying manufacturing jobs.

Wage growth is sharply declining in the U.S. Many of the most desirable companies to work for have announced job cuts, including American Airlines, Alphabet (Google), Citigroup, UPS, and Amazon.

Winning Michigan, Wisconsin, and Georgia or Arizona is all Trump needs to retake the White House in 7 months. Michigan is more dependent on car manufacturing than Ohio, and last Wednesday Biden delivered a death knell to the auto industry.

Biden issued regulations through the EPA that will require most new cars and trucks to be electric vehicles or hybrids in less than a decade, by 2032. Unless reversed, the new rules will transfer hundreds of thousands of automaking jobs from Michigan to China, which is churning out electric vehicles more cheaply than anyone else.

Biden follows the lead of California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has required that electric vehicles comprise most new vehicle sales by 2028, and by 2035 all sales of new cars, SUVs, and light trucks must be electric. Biden gave California a special waiver from the Clean Air Act to allow leftwing environmentalists to impose their own emissions requirements, and 11 additional states foolishly plan to adopt California’s unrealistic ban on gasoline-powered cars.

Biden’s pro-China car mandates will bankrupt Detroit’s auto manufacturers. EVs are immense money-losers for the “Detroit Three” companies, totaling less than 4% of sales by General Motors and Ford last year.

This issue can flip Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin to the Republican side, as it has already done for Ohio. Both Michigan and Pennsylvania depend on manufacturing jobs, and cold Wisconsin winters require gasoline-powered cars rather than the temperature-fussy EVs.

Biden’s campaign recognizes that he has a jobs problem. Immediately after the Ohio primary Biden traveled to the swing state of Arizona to announce an $8.5 billion handout and $11 billion in loans to support Intel’s new semiconductor facilities to make chips on which electric vehicles depend far more than traditional cars do.

Biden is also taking advice from Democrat Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA), who is up for reelection, opposing the planned takeover of US Steel by a Japanese company. Left-leaning Politico reports that “Sen. Bob Casey and other Democratic Rust Belt senators have been pushing Biden toward ever-more-populist trade and economic policies.”

Biden’s gestures are too little, too late. His policy of opening the border to illegal immigrants hurts American jobs, and his war on Detroit automakers by mandating EVs produced by China is devastating to the American worker.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.

These columns are also posted on PhyllisSchlafly.com, pseagles.com, and Townhall.com.

SCOTUS Went 0-for-4 on Monday

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

The Supreme Court went 0-for-4 on Monday, which in spring training for baseball would justify sending the batter to the minor rather than the big leagues. In four cases the Court should have stood strongly against wrongdoing by Biden, the Department of Justice, and the State of New York, but instead acted to appease those liberal regimes.

First up was the case that Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) calls “the most consequential free speech case in U.S. history,” Murthy v. Missouri. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit had properly enjoined the Biden Administration from telling social media, such as Facebook and YouTube, to take down postings that Democrats do not like.

Such interference with free speech is an affront to the First Amendment, and yet most of the Supreme Court justices seemed just fine with it. The Justices should have taken the White House to the woodshed for its interference with Americans’ exercise of freedom of speech as guaranteed by the First Amendment.

It was a dismaying barrage of pro-censorship comments by justices that condoned infringements on free speech by the Biden Administration. Liberal Justice Elena Kagan declared that manipulation of the media “happens literally thousands of times a day in the federal government.”

Five Republican Justices raised no objection to the censorship of free speech by the Biden Administration. Only Justice Alito demanded to know why “There is constant pestering of Facebook and some of the other platforms,” and government officials “want to have regular meetings, and they suggest … rules that should be applied and why don’t you tell us everything that you’re going to do so we can help you and we can look it over.”

“And I thought: Wow, I cannot imagine federal officials taking that approach to the print media.” Justice Alito explained that the federal government has leverage over social media because of its special legal immunity from lawsuits, and the government has been “treating Facebook and these other platforms like they’re subordinates.”

Next up was the lawsuit by the National Rifle Association (NRA) against New York State officials for telling insurers and bankers not to do business with the pro-Second Amendment group. This case concerns such an egregious infringement on the First Amendment that the Biden Administration even participated in oral argument mostly on the side of the NRA.

But again a terrific opportunity to educate the public about the importance of a robust First Amendment was kicked away. At times it appeared that the attorney arguing for the Biden Administration was a bigger defender of the NRA’s right to free speech than some of the Republican-appointed justices were.

The New York Times’ analysis suggests that the NRA will win its case, but it should win with a broad ruling rather than a narrow one that the justices seemed to prefer. New York State officials actually met with the insurer Lloyd’s to tell it not to provide insurance to the NRA, and the Court’s decision may be limited to the misconduct of that meeting.

The third case was the application by Trump’s senior advisor Peter Navarro, Ph.D. from Harvard, to remain free from prison pending his appeal of his conviction in the anti-Trump D.C. venue for declining to testify before the Trump-hating congressional January 6th committee. Navarro invoked executive privilege, as other high-level Trump officials have, and he is likely to be pardoned by a re-elected Trump on the next January 20.

Chief Justice John Roberts withheld Navarro’s application from the full Court, and Roberts then denied it in a one-page ruling Monday afternoon that failed to address any of Navarro’s compelling defenses. Roberts’ superficial ruling relied entirely on procedural technicalities, failing to recognize that most defendants in Navarro’s circumstances are allowed to remain free pending appeal.

Navarro reported to prison on Tuesday as required, and will be free again in about three months. “There is much at stake here and it is worth the fight,” Navarro declared about continuing his appeal in the courts.

Finally, the Court’s fourth strike-out at the plate on Monday was to extend again an injunction against the good new Texas law, SB 4, which authorizes Texas officials to arrest illegal aliens and remove them to the border for deportation by federal officials. Fortunately, on Tuesday the Court voted 6-3 to allow this law to go into effect, but two Justices (Barrett and Kavanaugh) weakly did so for procedural reasons conditioned on the Fifth Circuit deciding Biden’s lawsuit against it soon.

In all four of these cases the Supreme Court could have acted in a way to strengthen our Constitution and our rights under it, including freedom of speech. Instead, the Court makes it painfully clear that it cannot be relied upon to save our country.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.

These columns are also posted on PhyllisSchlafly.com, pseagles.com, and Townhall.com.

Let Texas Secure the Border

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Hidden beneath the kerfuffle about last week’s speeches on Capitol Hill, a significant debate is occurring just across the street at the Supreme Court. There the Biden Administration is asking the Court to block a splendid new Texas law against illegal aliens, SB 4, and on Monday Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed his vigorous response in full support of this law.

SB 4 strengthens the ability of Texas law enforcement officials and judges to take appropriate action against illegal aliens, including making it a state crime for them to enter or re-enter Texas unlawfully. A state judge is authorized to order a convicted illegal alien to be transported by state officials to an official port of entry along the border, where he can then be deported by the federal government back to Mexico.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit expedited this case and will hold oral argument on April 3rd, but the Biden Administration demanded an immediate injunction from the Supreme Court against this good law. The Court granted a temporary administrative stay to Biden that blocks this law pending a further ruling by the high court, which is expected later this month.

The Constitution recognizes that every State retains the sovereign power to defend itself against a foreign invasion, which is what the illegal migration over the Texas-Mexico border by millions of people, organized and directed by armed transnational drug cartels, really is. Biden has deliberately chosen not to enforce federal laws against these crimes, but he should not be able to stop Texas from enforcing its own laws consistent with the unenforced federal laws.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) recently tweeted details about another tragic death of an American caused by an illegal alien, this time in Hazelwood, Missouri. Driving in the wrong lane at more than 70 mph in a 40 mph zone without a driver’s license, an illegal from Venezuela smashed head-on into a car carrying 12-year-old Travis Wolfe, who subsequently died on March 6 after being on life support for nearly 3 months.

“Texas is the nation’s first-line defense against transnational violence and has been forced to deal with the deadly consequences of the federal government’s inability or unwillingness to protect the border,” Paxton’s brief tells the Supreme Court. By trying to stop Texas from enforcing a law that he refuses to enforce, Biden harms not just Texas, but prevents all of us from defending ourselves against illegal aliens.

Paxton told the Court on Monday that “the Constitution recognizes that Texas has the sovereign right to defend itself from violent transnational cartels that flood the State with fentanyl, weapons, and all manner of brutality.” Biden interferes with this sovereign right of Texas, and in the recent primary Texas Republican voters, who hold a solid majority there, agreed with Paxton and against Biden.

For the first time in a half-century, the Speaker of the Texas House is headed to a crushing defeat at the hands of a young conservative endorsed by Paxton. Dade Phelan had ambushed Paxton last May with a surprise impeachment, after pressuring dozens of Republicans to vote with Democrats in order to try to remove Paxton from the office of Texas Attorney General, where he has protected the nation against illegal invasion by migrants.

Paxton’s endorsements carried to stunning landslide victories two challengers to incumbents on the top criminal court in Texas, which had rebuffed Paxton’s efforts to protect election integrity. A third judicial challenger endorsed by Paxton for that court also won, as did eight challengers to House incumbents; another nine challengers endorsed by Paxton forced the incumbents into the runoff election in May.

The grassroots movement for Texas independence also did well in this primary. Shelley Luther, the Dallas hairdresser who went to jail in 2020 for merely opening her salon during the Covid lockdown, was one of many who prevailed in the legislative primary after embracing a vote on “Texit,” a play on the term “Brexit” by which Britain exited from the European Union.

Continued refusal by the Supreme Court to allow Texas to defend itself against upwards of 10 million illegal aliens – more than a third of the lawful Texas population – puts Texans in a tight spot as they feel unsafe merely going to a grocery store. As Biden continues to deny Texans their right to protect themselves against the illegal invasion, it is predictable that more Texans will embrace the independence movement as the only viable option.

Biden’s DOJ has until Wednesday to reply to Paxton’s persuasive arguments against the scourge of the illegal invasion there. Our entire country would benefit if Texas were allowed to close its border with Mexico and take all appropriate steps to end illegality by migrants who have already poured by the millions into the Lone Star State.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.

These columns are also posted on PhyllisSchlafly.com, pseagles.com, and Townhall.com.

Fear of Disunity Swings Roberts to Trump’s Side

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Signs of our country fracturing may have struck a chord with Chief Justice John Roberts, resulting in the surprisingly strong decision on Monday that ends attempts by liberals to disqualify Trump from the presidency. Roberts has disappointed conservatives for a decade, often providing the swing 5th vote for the liberal side, but he appears to be having nightmares about national disunity.

On Monday, Roberts and the Court shut down the effort to use a long-forgotten provision of the Fourteenth Amendment to disqualify Trump from becoming president again. This abruptly ends a year-long quest by Trump-haters to disqualify Trump on the pretext of the Capitol protests on January 6, 2021.

Colorado was the first state to exclude Trump from its ballot, which the unsigned decision of the Supreme Court reversed on Monday to ensure that Trump will be on the ballot there and everywhere else. The ruling was not a moment too soon, as Maine and Illinois had imitated Colorado by blocking Trump from their ballots, too.

At oral argument Roberts warned that Republican states might retaliate by removing Biden from their ballots. His concern is a chaotic future of states misusing the ballot access process in order to tip the presidential election to one side or the other.

Roberts’ decision for the Court then went far beyond the issue of ballot exclusion. To the consternation of liberals, Roberts’ ruling prohibited liberals from disqualifying Trump from the office of presidency by any other way, unless Congress enacts a law authorizing it (which it will not do).

The Court’s opinion tracks the line of questioning by Roberts at oral argument, where he fretted in speculation about practical consequences if Colorado were allowed to exclude Trump from its ballot. Roberts has always been more of a political animal than a legal scholar, preferring simple logical discussion and straightforward arguments about hypothetical scenarios.

The tell-tale sign that Roberts wrote the unsigned opinion is the reaction by the frustrated liberal Justices. Their very first sentence quoted one of Roberts’ prior opinions, as if to rebut him with his own words.

The liberal justices' confrontation of Roberts shows their desperation in being unable to persuade him in a more flattering way. Without Roberts, liberals cannot win on any Trump-related case, even if they are able to pull Justice Amy Coney Barrett to their side.

By lashing out against Roberts, the leftwing justices alienated Justice Barrett in the middle and she rebuked them for their rhetoric. Even though Barrett agreed with liberals that Roberts’ decision went further than it had to, Barrett criticized the liberal Justices for inflaming the “national temperature” at this time, rather than lessening tensions as she felt the Court should be doing.

The sweeping scope of Roberts' decision is devastating to the Never-Trumpers. Not only must Colorado allow Trump back onto its ballot, but the decision effectively prevents anyone in federal or state government from disqualifying Trump, thereby ending all schemes to prevent a victorious Trump from taking office.

The liberal justices agreed that Colorado was wrong to exclude Trump from its ballot, but shockingly wanted options left open for the federal government to disqualify Trump in other ways. It is not clear what the Left has up its sleeve for interfering with the authority of the next elected president, but additional frivolous legal actions against Trump by the Department of Justice are predictable.

In the last Trump Administration the top military brass was defiant of Trump even though he was the Commander-in-Chief. Fortunately, the Supreme Court has eliminated all the arguments by the Left of illegitimacy to the next Trump Administration.

Trump looked fit and trim in delivering a powerful televised statement in response. He thanked the Supreme Court and then turned to the ongoing politically motivated prosecutions of him, and the harm being caused by Biden letting in millions of illegal aliens.

In contrast with the highly scripted public comments by Biden, Trump covered more than a dozen issues extemporaneously, and then responded to a question from the media.

Next month the Supreme Court will hear Trump’s appeal on the issue of his presidential immunity. Liberals have little chance of prevailing as long as Chief Justice Roberts justifiably remains concerned about disunity that would result from allowing the anti-Trump circus to continue interfering with the voters’ selection of the next president.

Roberts does not want a fractured country to reduce him from Chief Justice of the United States to merely a chief justice of the swamp along the Potomac River. In a paraphrase of what Phyllis Schlafly said about her hard-fought victories, Roberts is welcome to choose any reason he likes to save our country from Leftist interference with our democratic process.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.

These columns are also posted on PhyllisSchlafly.com, pseagles.com, and Townhall.com.

GOP’s Right to Reject Funding of Perpetual War

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

A dramatic meeting on Tuesday at the White House for sending $60 billion more to the NATO war in Ukraine was stacked 4-to-1 against conservatives. That is hardly fair but reflects the intense pressure by globalists to pour more money down this bottomless pit of war.

The two top Democrats in the House and Senate, plus Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) who does not represent a majority of Republican senators on this issue, joined with President Biden to browbeat Speaker Johnson to allow a House vote on the $60 billion supplemental appropriation. Johnson emerged from this meeting by properly saying that we need to put the crisis at our own southern border first.

Speaker Johnson is on the same side as Donald Trump, whose influence grows despite Democrats’ attempt to exclude him. Trump’s landslide victory over the globalist candidate Nikki Haley in her home state of South Carolina on Saturday continues his trajectory toward reelection in November, rendering Biden a lame duck for the remainder of his term.

The satirical Babylon Bee quipped, “Congress issued a dire warning to the American people Friday, sternly reminding voters that if they do not keep sending billions of tax dollars to Ukraine, the war might end.” American taxpayers should not be funding more bloodshed there.

Yet the newly installed Polish foreign minister, Radosław Sikorski, went on CNN Sunday to demand this foreign aid, pompously telling Speaker Johnson that “the credibility of your country is at stake.” Sikorski speaks perfect English because he was educated at England’s Oxford University, which has promoted globalism since the time of the first Queen Elizabeth over 400 years ago.

Sikorski would not hold his position if the prior conservative Polish government had not foolishly allowed in more than a million Ukrainian migrants. This vast influx ran the Polish economy into the ground, and its GDP plummeted from a growth rate of 5.3% in 2022 to only 0.2% and high inflation in 2023.

Meanwhile Russia appears to be thriving by producing vast amounts of oil, in contrast with Biden’s anti-energy policies that hinder our economy. Last week Rosneft, which is Russia's largest oil producer, declared a 47% increase in its net profits for 2023, totaling $14 billion, and oil funds a third of the Russian government’s budget.

Russia’s military-based economy produces far more munitions than the West. Sen. JD Vance (R-OH), who opposes more funding of the war in Ukraine, told a conference of globalists last week in Munich that Ukraine uses in a month as many Patriot missile interceptors as it takes the United States a year to make, and the Patriot is now on a five-year back order.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Army announced its elimination of 24,000 positions, partly because of the shortfall in enlistment. Recruiting into our military has fallen far below expectations, and threats by D.C. politicians to send American troops to defend the borders of small NATO member countries will not be tolerated by voters.

Phyllis Schlafly called for disbanding NATO at the end of the Cold War, and she opposed the “mission creep” that has led NATO to meddle in Ukraine, in provocation of Russia. We should not support Ukrainian president Zelensky’s ambition to capture the Crimean peninsula, where the Russian navy has been stationed at Sevastopol for 240 years.

Zelensky canceled national elections that had been scheduled for this spring, and the globalists who pretend to care about promoting democracy should object to that. There is a large constituency of Ukrainian Americans in Ohio, where their Sen. Vance outspokenly opposes continued American funding of this war.

House Speaker Johnson has a superb opportunity to attach conditions before allowing a vote on sending billions more to Ukraine. First, Johnson should demand that Biden fully close our southern border to end illegal immigration there and, second, he should halt the funding of the politicized prosecutions against Trump and his supporters.

The latest data from the Biden Administration shows that Arizona has surpassed Texas in being inflicted with the largest invasion by illegal aliens. The Border Patrol reports that 250,000 illegals entered an Arizona sector in the last four months despite the treacherous landscape there.

The shocking murder of a young Georgia nursing student and “disfiguring her skull,” while she was jogging, was charged against an illegal alien arrested twice but released. “Instead of sending him back, Biden’s failed policies allowed him to be released into the country, where he murdered an innocent American girl,” Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) tweeted.

The politicians in D.C. should focus on the many problems along our own border before sending more money to fund a boundary dispute in Eastern Europe. Trump promises to end this war by forcing Ukraine and Russia into a negotiated settlement, which is the sensible approach.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.

These columns are also posted on PhyllisSchlafly.com, pseagles.com, and Townhall.com.

Biden Imprisons His Rivals Until They Die, Too

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

The hue and cry about the recent death of Putin critic Alexei Navalny in a Russian prison overlooks that Biden and the Deep State are trying to imprison Trump until he dies, too. Anti-Trumpers in our country have been misusing the legal system with a vengeance ever since Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Trump compared Navalny’s death, while under a three-decade prison sentence, to the relentless lawfare to imprison and bankrupt himself. Some scoffed at that comparison, but Biden and his minions are trying to treat Trump as Putin reportedly mistreated Navalny.

Trump posted on Truth Social, “The sudden death of Alexei Navalny has made me more and more aware of what is happening in our Country. It is a slow, steady progression, with CROOKED, Radical Left Politicians, Prosecutors, and Judges leading us down a path to destruction.”

President Trump properly commuted the 14-year sentence of Democrat Rod Blagojevich, but Biden has not pardoned or released any of the Trump supporters who have received even longer sentences for non-violent activity. While pro-Trump protestors are imprisoned in a Gulag as Navalny was in Russia, Biden and his media supporters applaud.

Biden’s prosecutors demanded a 33-year prison sentence for Enrique Tarrio for a January 6-related protest even though Tarrio was not even at the Capitol that day. Tarrio received a 22-year sentence, while other Trump supporters were sentenced to more than 15 years and it seems likely some will die in prison as Navalny did.

The Republican-controlled House in Congress lacks initiative, merely reacting to demands by liberals for massive foreign aid. The GOP House should condition their vote on any Continuing Resolution on a termination of all funding for the prosecutions against Biden’s political rivals.

In globalist-controlled England, the second-highest target of the Deep State has his final hearing before its top court before he is extradited to the U.S. Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, is being sought by U.S. prosecutors for what would be a show trial here followed by life imprisonment.

Federal espionage charges pending against Assange for exposing lies by the government carry a maximum prison sentence of 175 years which means that Assange, like Navalny, would probably die in a U.S. prison. To persuade a British judge to approve extradition, the Feds absurdly represented that they might allow Assange to serve out his sentence in his native Australia.

Assange has always lived outside of the U.S. and is a citizen of Australia, so this is an abuse of globalist power for the Deep State to insist on bringing him here for a trial. He and his wife predict that he’ll die in jail here if the British High Court allows the extradition.

Wikileaks published information showing how much the federal government has been lying to the American people. That should not be a crime, but embarrassing the Feds is, in their view, the most heinous crime of all.

It was Assange and Wikileaks who published 20,000 leaked emails from high-level officials at the Democratic National Committee in the summer of 2016, which proved that Democrats had lied in pretending not to be siding with Hillary Clinton. Democrats then insisted without evidence that Russian hackers trying to help Trump were the source of the emails, another lie that Assange rebuked.

That leak helped discredit Hillary Clinton during her campaign for president, and was considered to be a reason she lost to Trump. Assange has been a target for a political prosecution ever since, and globalists persuaded the UK Home Secretary Priti Patel to approve in 2022 his extradition to the U.S.

Biden’s Secretary of Homeland Security, the recently impeached Alejandro Mayorkas, has personally prevented Biden’s political rival RFK Jr. from receiving customary Secret Service protection despite multiple criminal intrusions of his home and an armed thug pretending to be a U.S. Marshal showing up at an RFK Jr. campaign event. Yet anti-Trumpers have remained silent about this mistreatment by Biden of his rival.

This is another issue that the GOP-majority House could hold a vote on, and enact a resolution calling on Biden to provide Secret Service protection for his political rivals. RFK Jr. is polling at 7% nationwide which is more than enough to justify providing him with the same protection that presidential candidates have typically received in prior elections.

Northwestern law professor Steven Calabresi calls the recent New York judgment of $355 million plus interest against Trump and his family “a travesty and an unjust political act rivaled only in American politics by the killing of former Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton by Vice President Aaron Burr.” When liberals complain about a regime misusing its power against a rival, then they should look first at how Biden is doing this.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.

These columns are also posted on PhyllisSchlafly.com, pseagles.com, and Townhall.com.

SCOTUS Should End Favoritism to Anti-Trump Prosecutors

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

The politically motivated federal prosecutors of Trump, as led by Jack Smith in D.C., have been ordered by the Supreme Court to respond in a week, by February 20, to Trump’s attorneys on an appeal that may decide the upcoming election. Democrat-appointed federal judges have allowed Smith and his political hacks to bypass ordinary procedure in seeking a pre-election criminal trial of Trump using the biased jury pool of D.C.

Ordinary procedure would afford Trump’s attorneys many months to appeal the one-sided decisions against him, but the Democrat-controlled D.C. Circuit has violated its own court rules to try to hurry a trial before the election. A verdict by jurors who voted 95% against Trump in the last election could then have an undue influence on voters nationwide.

This is the same case that prosecutor Jack Smith demanded the Supreme Court take up on an emergency basis last December, which the Court unanimously declined. Smith argued then that the issue of legal immunity for Trump’s actions as president could only be decided by the Supreme Court in an expedited procedure, such that his criminal trial of Trump in D.C. could begin.

But now Smith is expected to argue the opposite, and try to persuade the Supreme Court to allow the trial to proceed without a full appeal before the High Court. Smith’s goal is to time this criminal trial for prior to the election, which is not a proper motivation for prosecutors who are supposed to be focused on enforcing the law.

Last week the D.C. Circuit denied Trump’s assertion of legal immunity for his official actions while president on January 6, 2021. The Democrat-majority judges on the D.C. Circuit, which is the intermediate federal appellate court there, gave Trump’s attorneys less than a week to seek a stay in the High Court to prevent a restarting of this criminal trial.

Trump’s attorneys did so on Monday with their reasonable request for the Supreme Court to restore ordinary procedures, so that Trump can object to this unprecedented prosecution of actions he took while president. Absolute immunity has protected the official acts of every president until Donald Trump; otherwise politically motivated prosecutions could occur whenever the Deep State disagrees with a president.

Last week, at the oral argument in the appeal of Colorado’s exclusion of Trump from the ballot, the battle lines were drawn such that 4 Republican-appointed Justices are on the side of Trump, while 3 Democrat-appointed Justices oppose him. An Obama appointee, Justice Elena Kagan, was artful in not offending Chief Justice John Roberts or Justice Amy Coney Barrett, whose votes liberals need to prevail 5-4 in the more important criminal case.

Justice Kagan was able to pull Roberts and Barrett over to Biden’s side on the issue of dismantling the border fence in Texas, to conservatives’ dismay. No opinions were issued with that 5-4 decision last month, and perhaps no explanation will accompany the upcoming decision on whether to grant Trump’s request for a stay of the federal D.C. prosecution.

Unlike Chief Justice Roberts, Justice Barrett’s questioning in the Colorado ballot case last week contained some hopeful signs for the pending appeal of the criminal case. She repeatedly referred to “President Trump,” rather than demeaning him as the “former president” as other justices did.

Justice Barrett also pointedly questioned whether President Trump received due process while being excluded from the ballot in Colorado, which he did not. Trump’s due process was violated when the Colorado court admitted hearsay evidence from Nancy Pelosi’s one-sided J6 Committee and allowed a sociologist to criticize Trump supporters.

Early during oral argument the questioning by Chief Justice John Roberts made it apparent that he would be voting against Colorado’s exclusion of Trump from its ballot, and the liberal bloc of the Court cannot prevail without Roberts’ vote on their side. The liberal media then expressed dismay at how the Left side of the Court did not lash out at Trump, but such comments would have been futile and only alienated Barrett, whom the Left needs.

Chief Justice Roberts has spent his entire career in D.C. ingrained into the Deep State, and he fretted that Republican states would retaliate against a Democrat presidential candidate if Colorado were to prevail in excluding Trump from its ballot. Roberts framed this in terms of federal versus state power, declaring that the 14th Amendment was enacted to restrict state power rather than allow states to exclude candidates from ballots as Colorado attempts.

The good news is that Roberts’ pandering to liberals in other cases has cost him credibility with the four right-of-center Justices: Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh. Hopefully Justice Barrett realizes that Roberts is a creature of D.C., and will not be led astray by him again.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.

These columns are also posted on PhyllisSchlafly.com, pseagles.com, and Townhall.com.